By Lauren Davis
Guest Author
Working with Kidsave to find forever families and lifelong mentors for older kids in foster care has been the opportunity of a lifetime. Kidsave’s advocacy, focused on each individual child, gave me a deeper understanding and appreciation for the undeniable resilience and unique experiences of children shuffled around the system. As a communications leader at the organization for more than four years, I was deeply concerned for the kids who were left languishing the longest, kids who are a part of my community and look like my family. These were Black children facing the real likelihood of aging out alone with incredible odds stacked against them.
As we worked to recruit families for these children with targeted ads and outreach, I began to understand the dilemma many in the child welfare system had been grappling with for many years. There wasn’t a consistent pathway for people in the Black Community to reach the Black kids in our organization. We began to ask ourselves questions: Were we sending the right message? Were we missing the right audience? Were we recruiting in the wrong places?
